The Cop

“I made the cake,” she objected. “I don’t want it to go to waste. You can tell your captain to send it down to the precinct or whatever you call it. It’s an exceptional cake. If cops like donuts, they’ll—”

“Listen, Pipsqueak, let’s get this straight. My job is to protect you, not take orders from you. This will go more smoothly if you remember I’m the boss.”

He tightened his grip on her arm and planted his other hand at the small of her back, preparing to unceremoniously shove her into the front seat of his car as if she were a criminal. Slamming her hand down on the open door, she stood her ground. “Look, pal, I’m just as unhappy about this situation as you are.”

“You think?”

The look he gave her dried her throat. Okay maybe she wasn’t quite as unhappy as he was. But why was that? Then she recalled her visit from his brother. She’d thought at the time that it was a bit odd that a cop’s family member was walking around the crime scene. J.C. moistened her lips. “This isn’t just about babysitting me. This case has some personal meaning to you, doesn’t it?”

Nik’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe. Get in the car.”

Once more she resisted the pressure of his hands. “Wait! We can figure a way around it. I have some suggestions. You might have noticed that my father has a real talent for bullying everyone who gets in his way.”

“And your point is?”

“I have twenty-five years of experience wiggling around him. I’m sure we can work—”

Nik gripped her chin in his hand, leaned in close and clipped his words off like bullets. “Shut up and get in the car.”

The moment he eased back to allow her to do so, she planted both hands on his chest and gave him one hard shove. The move caught him by surprise and he stumbled back a step, pulling her with him. That was when she felt a searing pain in her upper arm and heard a ping. Next thing she knew something that felt like a Mack truck had slammed her flat against the pavement.

It took a few seconds before the pain sang its way through her whole body, a few more for her senses to sort through the source of each separate ache. But finally, J.C. registered that her head hurt, her arm stung and Nik’s weight on top of her had probably collapsed a lung. The tarmac was hot beneath her back, and Nik was swearing an equally hot blue streak in her ear.

For some odd reason the sound of his voice comforted her. He took time to draw in a breath, then lifted his head and said, “You all right?”

“I’m alive.” She concentrated on that one small fact while Nik wiggled on top of her, drawing out both his gun and his cell phone. Flipping open the cell, he pressed one button and began to speak tersely into it.

J.C. took stock. She was definitely alive, but she was a little worried that she was becoming way too familiar with the sound of gunfire.

“Who shot at me?” she asked when Nik was through on his phone.

“My money’s on your pal Snake Eyes.”

That’s where her money would have gone, too—to win, place and show. “That means he waited for me.”

“We’re on the same page there, Pipsqueak. And he wants you dead pretty bad to try for it with cops swarming all over the place.”

She hadn’t been scared before, not since Nik had arrived on the scene, perhaps because none of it had seemed real, but the thought of that horrible man hanging around, waiting for her to come out of the church, sent an icy arrow of fear through J.C.

Another thought occurred to her. “If you hadn’t handcuffed me to that radiator, I would have run back to the rectory to blow out the candles. Then I probably would have started loading the cake and the champagne into my van. I’m like that. When I’m nervous, I like to keep busy.” A tremor moved through her body. “He could have picked me off like a duck in a shooting gallery.”

“It didn’t happen.” Nik met her eyes, his voice just as terse as it had been on his phone. “It’s not going to happen. And you can take that to the bank. I’ve been assigned to protect you, and I’m good at my job.”